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Destination: Spain

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Franco Lives

I’ve spent as much time traveling and researching in Spain as in most other countries of Europe, but I don’t have as many friends here. I mentioned that frustration to my guide, Frederico (who is a friend). He shared an explanation: Spain’s older generation grew up under Franco (the fascist dictator who ruled until the mid-1970s). Anyone my age and older didn’t have the opportunity to study abroad, and foreign languages weren’t encouraged in Franco’s xenophobic Spain.

Spain’s movies are dubbed — with lips flapping out of sync while you hear the dialogue in Spanish. This is another part of Franco’s heritage. Young people didn’t pick up the melody of foreign languages at the movies (as they do in most of Europe), and movies could be easily censored without people even realizing it.

My observation that younger Spaniards aren’t very religious (the feeling I got after spending Easter here) is also related to Franco. Historically, the Spanish Church has long meddled in political power. Franco was highly moralistic, and the Spanish Catholic Church was his ally in all things conservative. While Franco is long gone, the moralistic ghost of the dictator still haunts Spain’s youth in the Church government’s conservatism — especially on abortion.

Spain does allow gay marriage (including the term “marriage”), and it’s legal to smoke marijuana here (but not to sell it). But abortion, divorce, and contraception remain points of exasperation for the secular younger generation. The Church’s rigidity in these matters alienates Spain’s youth.

Guides here have no choice but to talk about Christian art — it’s everywhere. But they do it with a (to me) sad detachment, often slipping in an “I’m not religious” disclaimer. Spain’s youth are spiritual — another friend of mine here told me how much joy she finds in meditative whirling, dervish-style, while contemplating God. But there’s no mainstream Protestant alternative to Catholic Christianity, so many opt out of organized religion entirely and have no faith at all.

Considering that the Church (capital C) is supposed to be a conduit between people and their innate need to get close to their Creator, it seems the Church here is not doing a very good job.

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And Boys, Bent under All That Tradition, Trudge through the Throngs

I just arrived in Toledo…and it’s holier than ever: Dark El Greco clouds overhead with bright clear horizons, and hail pelting huge masses clogging the streets awaiting the Good Friday procession.

(Eight days in, and I’ve researched Granada, Nerja, Ronda, and Córdoba. My trip is nine parts, thirds broken into thirds: Andalucía, Madrid/Toledo, Basque Country/Galicia; Rome, Tuscany, Florence; and three TV shows in the former Yugoslavia.)

Holy week clogs the streets in Spain. Every city south of Madrid seems to have a Semana Santaschedule booklet listing each of the processions: its home church, where it starts, and where it ends. In Córdoba, they were staggered, leaving every hour or so through the afternoon and lasting many hours each — some into the wee hours.

People lined the streets in anticipation. Cameras on long booms were poised in front of neighborhood churches. In bars, all eyes were fixed on the TVs watching not soccer or bullfighting…but live coverage of their town’s Holy Week procession.

Streets are speckled with dribbled candle wax and sunflower seeds from last night’s procession. Spaniards seem to be voracious sunflower seed-munchers at parades.

In my earlier days, I would have been in hog heaven with all this commotion. On this trip, I have a mission — to review restaurants each night. Last night in Córdoba, I physically couldn’t get through the crowds to the restaurants on my list. So, I joined the scene.

Paraders in their purple-and-white KKK-style cone hats, Crusader swords, and four-foot candles shuffle endlessly. Like American kids scramble for candies at a parade, Spanish kids collect dripping wax from religious coneheads, attempting to amass the biggest ball on a stick for their 2009 Easter souvenir.

Even in our fast-paced and secular world, the rich traditions are strong. While it seems half the population is caught up in the action, I’ve yet to meet anyone really thinking about what Easter is all about. Maybe faith is a private matter. Maybe it’s dead. Maybe I’m talking to the wrong people. Maybe it’s inertia from centuries of moms making you go. Or maybe people just like an excuse for a parade.

The procession squeezes down narrow alleys, legions of drums crack eardrums in the confined space, the local press jostles with tourists for the best photos, kids sit wide-eyed on paternal shoulders, and finally the float itself rumbles slowly by: gilded, candlelit, and crushing bystanders against rustic ancient walls. Parade officials — like holy bodyguards — make sure progress is unimpeded. I look up, and high in the sky is what Good Friday is all about: an extremely Baroque Jesus lurching forward under the weight of that cruel cross symbolically climbing to his crucifixion.

Later, back at my hotel, it occurred to me that the float floated not on wheels but on boys. Unseen and unheralded, bent under all that tradition, a team of boys was trudging for hours through the throngs.

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Leche Caliente and Mushy Frosted Flakes

Three days into my Spain trip and I’m settling in just right. (I believe that when I sweat, there’s already a faint whiff of jamón.)

Tonight I blitzed restaurants and tapas bars in Ronda with a local guide and friend. I needed a bite to eat before running all over town to check restaurants, but it was out of the question for him — just too early. Antonio, who eats at 10 p.m., can’t get his brain around Americans eating so early. I told him I routinely eat at 6 or 7 p.m., and to him that was a wild as eating at 10 p.m. is to an American.

I’ve been eating standing up a lot in tapas bars. (I’d much rather sit.) Antonio said Spaniards eat standing up without a second thought, but they really like to sit when they smoke. And they are astounded when they hear about Americans eating while they walk or drive.

For breakfast today in my hotel, the only cereal was the local frosted corn flakes. As there was no “more mature” option, I was tickled to have a bowl. But the cereal milk was heated… apparently standard here in southern Spain. My poor frosted flakes were immediately mush. Not grrrrrrreat.

Southern Spain is inundated by expat Brits and Americans living here. Locals say, “If they could take the sunny weather home, they would; but since they can’t, they stay here.” Many live here for years without learning the language, or even trying. Brits have their own system of English-language private schools that fit right in with schools back home, so their kids are set for higher education back in England. The expat community has their own English-language radio station — “Coastline Radio 96.7 FM.” (The DJ finds last night’s Letterman and Leno jokes transcribed at www.newsmax.com/jokes/ and recycles them.)

I connected with an American friend yesterday who’s lived here for nearly 20 years. His email address had been the Spanish for “CowboyDave@yahoo.com,” but he changed it. When I asked him why, he explained that to the Brits, calling someone a “cowboy” is like calling them a scam artist. (When ripped off, they’d blame a “cowboy builder” or “cowboy auto mechanic.”) It was coloring people’s perception of him.

Learning on the road is a big part of being on the road.

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Euro Experiences from NW to SE — Part IV

Let me stoke your travel dreams for 2009 by sharing some of my favorite European experiences, roughly from northwest to southeast. Maximizing the experience is a dimension of smart budget travel that’s just as important in challenging times as saving money. Imagine these…

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Many abhor the French passion for la gavage — the force-feeding of their geese. To learn about the tradition, walk through the idyllic French farmland with a Dordogne farmer, surrounded by a hundred happy geese, dragging their enlarged livers like loaded diapers. On a visit to a gavagefarm, feel the rhythm of life for a goose…taste a slice of that glorious foie gras…and be thankful you’re tops on the food chain.

People visit Paris’ St. Sulpice Cathedral to worship, to track down a scene from Da Vinci Codelegend, and to climb into the loft to see perhaps Europe’s greatest pipe organ played by Europe’s greatest pipe organist. After Mass, a tiny green door in the back pops open. Join a gang of organ aficionados and scamper like sixteenth notes up a tight spiral staircase to the dusty loft. Pass 19th-century Stairmasters upon which men once tread — filling the billows that powered the mighty organ — and enter the ramshackle loft where a venerable lineage of world-class organists have performed. The current organist, Daniel Roth, graciously welcomes visitors each Sunday. Rest your chin on the historic organ, and watch as Mssr. Roth powers an entire church with his mastery of the mighty bank of keyboards.

You can read about the carnage as German and French soldiers slaughtered each other day after day on the Western Front. Or you can wander silently through fields of white crosses at the vast World War I cemetery at Verdun — realizing that less than a century ago, that horrific battle of attrition left half of all the men in France between the ages of 15 and 30 as casualties. You’ll come away with a deeper understanding of why, to this day, France is reluctant to go to war.

In Beaune, surrounded by the hallowed vineyards of Burgundy, the venerable Marche aux Vins (wine market) welcomes serious wine buyers and tourists in a subterranean, candlelit world, where fine wines sit seductively on old oak kegs, just waiting to be tasted. Pick up a tastevin(shallow stainless steel tasting dish) and a shopping basket, descend into dimly lit caverns, and work your way through the proud selection. Sampling a world of $100 bottles in the company of people who live for their fine wine can be both inspirational and intoxicating.

Summit the Rock of Gibraltar by taxi or cable car to find yourself at a unique perch: the only place on earth where you can see two continents and two seas come together. Gaze out at Africa and notice the energy in the straits. Ponder the action where two bodies of water meet, creating choppy riptides where little fish gather, attracting big fish, who attract fishermen. Consider the action at this meeting point of two great civilizations — Islam and Christendom — rubbing like cultural tectonic plates for 1,300 years. Then ape with the monkeys who call the Rock home and couldn’t care less.

In Santiago de Compostela, in the northwest corner of Spain, stand in front of the cathedral at mid-morning to greet the daily batch of well-worn pilgrims completing the Camino de Santiago. For centuries, humble seekers have hiked from Pairs and points all over Europe to this spot. With leathery faces, tattered pants, and frayed walking sticks, they plant their hiking boots victoriously on the scallop shell symbol of St. James imbedded in the square, look up at the cathedral that marks the end of their journey, and are overcome with jubilation.

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Excuse Me While I Clean My Notebook…

Spain has fun with names. For instance, they call dried apricots orejones — now every time I look at one I’ll think, “Eeeww, big ears.”

One of my pet peeves is that Americans are the noisiest people in mellow and potentially romantic restaurants throughout Europe. The other day, back in Orvieto, I was jabbering away with some happy travelers I met with my guidebook when a local woman leaned far across from her table and gave us a classic “shhhhhhh.” Oops.

Spain has a class of educated professional workers whose wages can’t keep up with prices. They call them “Mileuristas” – meaning, the educated poor, earning 1,000 euros ($1,300) a month.

In Barcelona, we stumbled upon a small demonstration. The police were out in force — it seemed like there were more cops than demonstrators. I commented to my friend that this was not much of a disturbance. He agreed, saying, “Yes, but we like to demonstrate. When the Iraq war started, everyone was out. Barcelona was literally filled with people. The parade couldn’t happen. The streets were only people and nobody moved.”

Use what you design. Three times, I’ve stood up from my hotel toilet and knocked the phone hanging on the wall into the toilet. Anyone running a hotel should sleep in each room before renting it.

I had a nightmare. It was an Edvard Munch painting of 40 people walking their dogs.

For the rest of your lives, you’ll be reminded, “Don’t inflate your life vest until you’re out of the aircraft.” I don’t believe these life vests (or your floatable seat cushions) have ever been used in the history of aviation by a commercial jet “in the event of a water landing.” (Can anyone set me straight here?)

A Spanish friend of mine explained the “rule of seven nos.” When dealing with authority in Spain, you must ask sheepishly and meekly seven times – and get seven nos – before getting the go-ahead. In my TV production, this has worked many times.

Some Spaniards were lamenting the kind of leadership they felt was coming from Washington D.C. these days. We got talking about Clinton. Federico said, “Our king, Juan Carlos, is a whore addict…but nobody cares. He’s a very good king.”

Carrying around my European cell phone is like raising a child whose language I cannot speak. It makes all sorts of noises. I don’t know what to do. I just ignore them.

It occurred to me that if we all work together, we can change the pronunciation of gorgonZOla (pronounced like the lady your supermarket would) to gorGONzola. (Say it like Dracula. Say it like Juan Carlos.)

Pet peeve: a refrigerator motor disturbing an otherwise silent room. I get up in a midnight frenzy and find a way to unplug it. Last night I laid awake at 3:30 and realized I’m listening to a motor cool air.

The French are committed to the best holidays possible. To ease beach congestion, they split their country into three zones and stagger school holidays. In Spanish resorts they know which region of France is on holiday by who fills their beaches.

Traveling and seeing young families, you see how much in common parents have. I believe this is a huge step to peace and understanding between nations.

When I return home and give talks on Europe today, I think one theme will be, “Affluence channeled into good living.”

The Rolling Stones are coming to about the poorest country in Europe — Montenegro. Tens of thousands of kids are paying $50 each for tickets. The concert is sold out. I’m coming to Montenegro too…in just a few days…and nobody knows.